Swimming watch

[SalmonnomlaS]

I have recently restarted swimming and am looking for a recommendation for a watch or something that keeps track of the no of laps as well as how quickly I am swimming them and monitor progress etc. If it can distinguish between the different strokes would be ideal. Any recommendations? Especially if not too expensive, but am flexible.

Also interested in headphones I cab listen to music or podcasts to whilst swimming

Honestly the only tracker I rate is SwimTag, and even that isn't perfect. Plus it's offered by the pool, not your own device.

I used to share lanes with channel swimmers. They swam as a solid group of 4 (all same distance). Their trackers all said something different (!)

You may as well get a general fitness tracker that you like look of and then see how well people rate it for tracking lengths. I had swimovate and it thought my front crawl was breaststroke. I never do breaststroke.

.... re music, I couldn't make that work either! I had expensive bone conduction ones. But other people seemed to get on with them fine. I couldn't hear anything when my head was in water, so rather pointless.

My Apple Watch tracks lengths, and can differentiate strokes. Recently it has updated and can now tell when I'm using a kick board too. It's pretty accurate.

If you have an Apple Watch you can install swim.com app

The Apple Watch by itself has a workout setting that has swimming as an activity and will count your lengths and speed but swim.com gives you more detailed information.

With regard headphones I've tried a few and have found the more basic 'old fashioned' ones the best. Bluetooth headphones don't work because Bluetooth signal doesn't travel through water so they cut out every time your ears go under water.

The mp3 players that you load with songs by plugging into your computer don't cut out and give better sound, obvious downsides is that you have to do the whole computer thing and you can't just stream music from your phone via Bluetooth.

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-ws410-series

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conduction-Headphones-Waterproof-Bluetooth-Underwater-AS19/dp/B0C8N5HJTW/ref=sr112sspa?keywords=Waterproof+Swimming+Headphones&qid=1699481199&sr=8-2-spons&sppcsd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

Thank you. No apple watch unfortunately but will look at the other suggestions